Critic's Notebook: Web TV is just waiting to click

Online television has yet to catch on like the traditional format, but it's just barely getting started and hubs like Hulu, Crackle and Koldcast point to a wide-open future.

By Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times Television Critic
June 26, 2011

Kiefer Sutherland, the star of "24," and John Hurt, the eminent British thespian, recently joined forces, playing opposite each other in "The Confession," a sort of short feature about a hit man and a priest. I say "sort of" because "The Confession" was created specifically to go online, in installments — there are 10 of them, averaging about seven minutes each; they ran from the end of March to the beginning of May on the video-streaming website Hulu. So it is a sort of television series as well, though one whose entire season lasts in the aggregate not much more than an hour...

Nevertheless, as improving varieties of streaming media become an increasingly popular way to watch what once could be seen only on an actual television set or in a theater, distribution points such as Hulu have begun to act as networks or studios. (Hulu, which has just been up for sale, is actually owned in common by several of them.) Sony Pictures' Crackle has some of the Web's flashier offerings, including "The Bannen Way," with its wiseguy con-man hero, stylish split screens and hot-girl assassins; "Angel of Death," penned by comic-book writer Ed Brubaker, with Zoe Bell ("Tarantino's #1 stunt woman") as a hired killer who acquires the compulsion to kill her old masters; and the sci-fi "Trenches," picked up from Disney's now-defunct Stage 9 Digital, which sports impressive "Battlestar Galactica" special effects. All have completed their single seasons but remain available for download in the timelessness of the Web.

 NOMINATED FOR TWO BEST ONLINE PROGRAM – DRAMA

The Bannen Way - Episode "The Prep Day"

Created & Written by
Jesse Warren & Mark Gantt
Executive Produced by
Mark Gantt & Jesse Warren
Directed by Jesse Warren

 Suite 7 - Episode "Company"

Written by Yuri Baranovsky
Executive Produced by Wilson Cleveland
Directed by Mark Gantt

Nominees of the 2011 Rockies Program Competition announced!

After reviewing over nine-hundred entries from around the world, our international juries have singled out the best programs and projects from the past year. Winners will be announced at one of three special Rockies awards ceremonies taking place during the Festival.

MY NAME'S MARK AND I'M AN... ACTOR

When I first started acting, I felt like I did when I first got sober, I was ashamed and embarrassed to say that I was an ac... act... actor. Like the Fonz in Happy Days trying to say he was wr... wr... WRONG. God forbid someone would ask me what I'd been in or why I wasn't on TV like the other guy that looks just like me. Several years in acting class did not fix it. Doing plays, short films, even a scene in Ocean's 11 opposite Brad Pitt didn't fix it either. I still could not help but feel uncomfortable about saying I was an actor. What I've come to see now is, I'd been focusing on what I thought it meant to be an actor. I thought, to be able to say you're an actor, you had to be a "Successful Actor" -- meaning someone who made a living from their acting. My mentor, Milton Katselas, didn't bother with the psychology of the whole  thing when I wanted to quit acting and just direct. He said to me, "You haven't given the acting thing a hundred percent. What you're not confronting in your acting will block you as a director. Do twenty scenes for me, I'll pick them out, and then you decide if you're done with acting." (You can read more on this in a previous blog, TO ACT... OR TO DIRECT... THAT WAS THE QUESTION)   He knew that I couldn't think my way into confidence as an actor, I had to actually push past my shit and build the confidence.

Leap Year (episodes airing now)
Have you been laid off? Do you want to watch a web series about layoffs happening to other people? Of course you do!
In Leap Year, the five main characters don't sit around and moan while collecting unemployment like normal, sane laid-off people. Nope, they start businesses and then enter a contest for $500,000. The money is promised to them by "a mysterious stranger with an exorbitant amount of money" who somehow has access to their office.
OK, so it's not the most realistic depictions of unemployment. Still, the series, written by Yuri and Vlad Baranovsky and sponsored by Hiscox Insurance, is kind of entertaining. Also, I'm jealous about the money. If nothing else, Craig Bierko is in it!

LoveMakers (episodes maybe coming soon)
Check out the trailer for this potential web series: http://lovemakers.tv

Look familiar at all? It's the same creators as Leap Year. Only this one's about a dating service that provides way more assistance to clients than most.
Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the preview trailer is all that exists. There hasn't been any recent mention of the series happening. And the main people involved are off doing Leap Year.
Too bad. The trailer is cool, and this is supposed to be a web series with 30-minute episodes, a much-needed variety.
Maybe it will turn up someday!

Do any of these new web series look interesting to you? What do you think could make the series a success? Leave a comment below with your opinions!